Five purchase-worthy albums from 2010

Here’s a handful of albums that are worth a listen before we get too deep into 2011: Butch Walker, The Henry Clay People, Elvis Costello, Josh Ritter and Eden Brent.

Peter Chianca

You probably got your hands (or your iPod) on some of the bigger releases this year. But if you’re as busy as the rest of us, there are probably at least a few stellar albums that somehow slipped through the cracks. Here’s a handful that are worth a listen before we get too deep into 2011.

‘I Liked it Better When You Had No Heart,’ Butch Walker

Seventies flourishes like urgent strings and out-of-the-blue background harmonies are present and accounted for on “I Liked it Better When You Had No Heart” (One Haven) — on one song, the rollicking “House of Cards,” Walker practically morphs into ELO before our ears.

But as satisfying as his ’70s sampling is, veteran producer Walker (who’s worked with everyone from Avril Lavigne to Dashboard Confessional) isn’t content to stay in one decade. A Byrds-cum-Petty jangle weaves its way though its share of tracks, including “Trash Day,” the modern-living lament that opens the album, and the sardonic “She Likes Hair Bands” comes complete with Pips-worthy “Woo-woo!”

Walker’s voice, while it might not always be entirely distinctive, adapts solidly to the styles he’s juggling. This includes the album-closing “Be Good Until Then,” a “Forever Young”-ish ballad of rules to live by for his baby son, and it’s worthy of the Dylan comparison. The whole album is a reminder that there’s such a thing as intelligent pop music for thinking people older than 30 — and those urgent strings don’t hurt either.

Download: “Trash Day”

‘Somewhere on the Golden Coast,’ The Henry Clay People

Now this is what rock is supposed to sound like. With their punkish sensibilities and lead singer Joey Siara’s somehow appealing style of yell-singing, The Henry Clay People manage to recall such influences as Bruce Springsteen, Marshall Crenshaw, The Kinks and Tom Petty, even as they come off as a complete original.

On their second album, “Somewhere on the Golden Coast” (TBD) the band has honed its ability to hold onto those influences while plowing headlong into the future with a clean, literate, joyously noisy sound that speaks well for the direction of rock ’n’ roll — if we’re lucky.

The band’s punk bona fides are present right off the bat with “Nobody Taught Us To Quit,” a one-minute raver with a message of dedicated slackerism, before segueing into a big-guitar ode to just getting by, “Working Part Time.” The whole enterprise is elevated by Joey and brother Andy Siara’s gorgeous guitar work — these guys knew what Chuck Berry meant when he sang about playing a guitar like ringing a bell.

The band has a sensitive side too: “We are damaged goods; we are damaged but we’re still good,” they sing on the nostalgic “A Temporary Fix.” But the majority of the no-filler 34 minutes of “Somewhere on the Golden Coast” is a loud, driving dedication to rock ’n’ roll’s propensity for keeping us from working too hard. And they don’t sound anywhere near ready to quit, either.

Download: “Working Part Time”

‘National Ransom,’ Elvis Costello

“You can’t hold me, baby, with anything but contempt,” Elvis Costello sings amid dueling guitars on the explosive title track that opens his latest album, “National Ransom” (Hear Music). It’s a classic Elvis indictment — this one taking on corporate greed, among other things — and an indicator that we may be about to experience Costello in full-on acerbic rock mode.

Nothing wrong with that, but Costello quickly disabuses us of that notion. The second track, “Jimmie Standing in The Rain,” is a character study of a lost soul that wouldn’t be out of place in Weill’s “Threepenny Opera.” It’s positively literary — “Nobody wants to buy a counterfeited prairie lullaby in a colliery town,” he notes almost matter-of-factly in one deceivingly elaborate verse — and a sure sign that when it comes to the whole of “National Ransom,” all bets are off.

The album takes us on a true musical journey, through rock, cabaret, country, Americana and vaudeville, and the results are both dizzying and stunning. That 30 years on Costello can show such versatility and heart bodes well for both him and us. And the fact that he can still be pretty prickly doesn’t hurt either.

Download: “National Ransom”

‘So Runs the World Away,’ Josh Ritter

Fans of Josh Ritter know that you never have to dig far to find the dark underbelly of even his sunniest sounding songs. But on “So Runs the World Away” (Pytheas), the dark elements bubble right up to the top, blending expertly with the sad and the wistfully ironic tones that are a Ritter trademark.

A song like “Rattling Locks” perhaps best exemplifies the dark alleys Ritter is traveling this time around: “I’m out here in the cold with a wet face, rattling your locks,” he sings ominously, practically spitting out the words. In the more upbeat “Lantern,” he repeats “I’ll hold it high for you” as if trying to light the way through the darkness through sheer force of will.

The old Ritter whimsy does make an appearance here and there; “The Curse” is nothing less than a story of a mummy who falls in love with the archaeologist who unearths him. (It doesn’t end well.) And while Ritter’s world is never a particularly happy place, in songs like the lilting, almost eight-minute “Another World” — which recalls Paul Simon at his most melancholy — it’s dark but beautiful.

It’s no party album, but “So Runs the World Away” offers a stunning musical indictment of how life and love can sometimes go bad — and maybe even a few glimmers of hope to light your way through it from one of the most insightful lyricists working today, period.

Download: “Lantern”

“Ain’t Got No Troubles,” Eden Brent

This album just blew me away. I know you can’t judge a book (or a CD) by its cover, but not being familiar with her music, the picture of 40-ish white lady Eden Brent leaning pensively against a store facade didn’t prepare me for her tough, completely authentic Bessie Smith growl, which overtakes “Ain’t Got No Troubles” (Yellow Dog) from the first measure and simply has its way with it. (Maybe that puff of smoke emanating from her lips in the cover photo should have tipped me off.)

In an album that seems to have been channeled into the present from about 70 years ago, Brent conveys a fabulous range within her boogie-woogie blues genre: She winks through the jaunty title track, which plays with the concept of having nothing left to lose, and she goes all-out juke-joint raucous on numbers like “Let’s Boogie Woogie.” But slower, soulful tracks like “Leave Me Alone” are smoky and heartbreaking, and on the album-closing “Goodnight Moon,” she takes a potentially cloying concept and turns it into sadly and beautifully resigned lament.

Brent’s vocals would be enough to propel this album, but she’s also playing the piano throughout, and her touch is awesome. She shifts effortlessly from rollicking boogie-woogie to expressively moving torch-song blues. With so much prefabricated plastic music out there, Eden Brent and “Ain’t Got No Troubles” are the opposite of crass; they’re both authentic, uncompromising and a sheer pleasure.

Download: “Ain’t Got No Troubles”

Peter Chianca writes the Gatehouse Media music blog Blogness on the Edge of Town (blogs.wickedlocal.com/springsteen). Reach him at pchianca@cnc.com.

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